I didn’t think I’d be talking about this again so soon. Ordinarily I would just post the trailer as a Daily Video if that. I’ve already done two articles of the two previous trailers.
However, the latest “international” trailer for Amazon MGM’s Masters Of The Universe movie actually fixes a problem with the other two trailers. The first leaned heavy into the comedy, while the second leaned heavy into the action and still didn’t give us some of the things we see in the new trailer. Skeletor shows up more prominent. We see more of He-Man in action. And yet the comedy of the first trailer still makes its way in there.
We’re going to look at all three major trailers thus far and see the evolution of the promotion for this movie, because I find this interesting enough to make into an article on its own. Additionally, He-Man enthusiast Pixel Dan Eardley got to see the first 20 minutes of the movie, so we’ll see his thoughts and then my thoughts on his thoughts. First, though, let’s follow the trailer.
First we get a look at the…well, the first trailer.
Not a complete comedy fest, but half the trailer is what’s sure to be the most boring part of the movie: the crap on Earth. This is a franchise about a fantasy world that also has advanced science in certain areas. No TV but it does have flying vehicles, video communication, and an occasional blurring of the lines between science fiction and fantasy, aka science fantasy. Nobody cares that much about Earth. For whatever reason DC Comics and Filmation both decided having Marlena Glenn come from Earth was important to her history even though it comes up so little I can count the times on one hand. (In the original comic where Superman shows up, Marlena’s backstory that one time, being a pilot, and that time He-Man had to save Earth by tossing a huge bomb at an asteroid. Even when they brought the Earth kids to introduce Christmas, her mentioning it wasn’t necessary to anything.)
The other half only gave us brief glimpses of the stuff we really wanted to see: Castle Grayskull, Eternia, the costumes for the characters…it was indeed a tease, which I guess works for a teaser trailer but it’s not what we wanted to see. The second trailer had more of that.
Now that’s more like it. Outside of the dork with the silly hairdo (for Earth, anyway), we get more action, we get more of what the characters are going to look like…this is what fans wanted to see. When this first came out I mentioned that this got me a little more excited for the movie, though due to Hollywood history and some comments made by the director and Teela actress a few old concerns still linger. We still get some jokes, and the franchise wasn’t above humor to break tension without ruining drama, but none of the HR nonsense or the Power Sword (or at least a replica that I suspect leads him to the real thing) being part of a comic store display stuff. Compare that to today where the jokes ruin the dramatic moments as if they don’t think the audience can handle the moments that should be intense. As for the new “international” trailer…
Here we have a little more balance of the comedy and action, but we get stuff we really wanted to see that we haven’t. Jared Leto’s Skeletor doesn’t look too bad. Sadly we still get more PR nonsense and Bun Man, but we get more of the movie’s backstory and a theme of pushing past failure. We also see Adam transform, though there’s no change in Adam’s voice. The point of the transformation was (for whatever reason DC Comics had and Filmation stuck with for even adding it when it wasn’t in the franchise prior) to give He-Man a secret identity. There’s no secret here. Everyone seems to know he’s supposed to be He-Man, and that’s kind of lame.
So toy collector and Masters Of The Universe enthusiast “Pixel” Dan Eardley got to see twenty minutes from parts of the movie at an official CinemaCon screening. Let’s see what he had to say. WARNING: Spoilers for the movie!
We already knew Skeletor took over from the trailers. I don’t know that I’m interested in that for main continuity. I do like hearing about the fealty to the action figures and the show’s action sequences, like Ram Man being Ram Man in how he attacks. Blaming the names on young Adam and the HR nonsense just sounds weird. Otherwise it sounds like they did pay attention to the visuals of the previous incarnation. However, there’s still room to screw this up, and Hollywood’s adaptation history still leaves room for doubt.
The easter eggs and “memorberries” are too often used to hide a terrible and insulting story, while the comedy ruins the tension instead of softening it so that it isn’t a total bummer. Considering Dan actually supported Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, including (not in spite of) some of the questionable choices in that show he’s a lot more open-minded than I am.
By the way, if you’re curious about the Four Non Blondes reference, you clearly missed this YouTube meme classic.
Still, this might turn out to be a good movie. This might even been a good adaptation, which we haven’t seen in some time. Time will tell. I’m still cautiously optimistic, and even that’s hard to go with given Hollywood’s current incarnation and reputation. I hope it’s good, but we’ll see on June 5th.
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